I was already beginning to feel the first two shots as I sat down, not enough to really make me drunk, but enough to make me tipsy. I stared into the dying fire. The smaller splits burn hot; the logs burn long; she had told me that. I watched a log disintegrate into ash and crumble, the embers slowly extinguishing as the fire continued to burn out. I made a grab for one of my books: How Not to Die in The Woods; the title had gotten me. It had a lot of tips about camping, enough that it made me want to try it out, maybe when the snow cleared. I opened a random page and started reading, nursing my third glass of whiskey.
My parents' personal library had probably over a thousand books. Their joined collection across dozens of genres had filled the room from floor to ceiling. It was still all there in the house. When I left, I hadn't really touched anything. Their housekeeper, security, and groundskeepers all still had their jobs. I didn't want the estate to completely decay before I decided to go back. All their holdings that had come to me I hadn't decided what to do with them yet.
I was going back; this was never meant to be permanent, but Natalie had almost completely changed my plans. Funny how that had happened. She'd probably never know but honestly, wouldn't likely care if she did. My dad had known her, but I was pretty sure my mother had never met her. What would she have thought of her? If everything hadn't gone to shit at the end, what would they have thought about her?
The whiskey must have been getting to me because I was feeling drowsy. I fell asleep thinking about my parents. I didn't want to forget them. I didn't want to get to that day when I tried to remember something about them, and it wasn't there anymore. It would be like them dying all over again.
Evie and Grayson Porter. The last time we had been together before the airport was at their place, having breakfast. They had been kidding about my love life, talking about their trip, having a good time. That was how I wanted to remember them. It was how they deserved to be remembered.
"Do you guys shit talk me like this in public?"
"Of course not, dear. Only when you can hear us," Evie said, smiling at me. She was kidding. I never took her good-natured teasing to heart. More than she would do that, she'd talk about how proud she was of who her son had become.
"That's encouraging. So it's only other people you're trying to impress, not me? Got it."
"What's wrong with that?" she asked, taking a sip from her teacup. I thought about it for a second.
"I can't think of anyone's opinion of me enough to try to change it."
"It’s like it happened backward with you," Grayson said. "I've met men in their fifties more optimistic than you."
"We talked about this, Dad."
"I understand the way you feel, but I think you might be missing the point with this one."
"What do you mean?"
"What he means, Cameron, is you're judging too harshly. Too fast. There are things about the lives that we live and the people around us live that change them. You don't have to put your head down and follow anyone's lead. You can live your own life." I looked at my mother, frowning.
"So you don't think it's a bad thing? What people do because they have enough money and power to say a big fuck you to everything that makes them human?"
"No, dear," she said, "All this," she motioned generally to the house, "is an incredible reward, gained through decades of hard work and luck. That's what your life is, and you are the only one who can choose how you're going to live it."
"You're in a position to do incredible things, change hundreds of lives, Cameron," my father said. "That's why you're in it."
"What do you mean?"
"Everything we've ever done, it's been for you, son. All of this, the company, we can't take it with us when we go. It's yours."
"I don't understand."
"You will, sweetheart," my mom said. My eyes opened, and I looked around the cabin. I was alone. Not only that, I had been dreaming. What the fuck. I got up. It took a few seconds to reorient myself. The fire was dead; I walked over to build another.
I could have sworn that... it had been so real. It had been like watching them from someplace outside, then being there with them. What the hell did that mean? It probably doesn't matter, I thought, feeding logs into the fireplace. I'd miss them sometimes; that was normal. This was normal. I told myself that as I went to the kitchen to start making something for dinner.
"Everything we've ever done, it's been for you, son. All of this, the company, we can't take it with us when we go. It's yours."
I shook my head; I had been out here alone too long.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Natalie
It had taken a few days, but it was ready. I had been in charge of getting the sales paperwork ready. There was an investor interested in purchasing Cameron's majority stake in Porter Holdings. He would walk out with a few hundred million dollars and never have to hear about the company again. Brett had asked to see the finished document this morning, asking me to bring it up. I was sitting across from him at his desk as he looked it over, reading the pages carefully.
"Now all we need is his signature," he said. As recently as a few weeks ago, I would have objected to what I knew was coming, but I just didn't have the energy to. It was no use, and if I was going to argue, I wanted to argue something that I would eventually win. I wasn't going to win this one. I just sighed, looking down at the papers.
"He isn't coming down just to scribble on some papers."